Putting down my marker: as I've said for months, Jeb Bush has zero chance of winning the GOP nomination. This race is between Marco Rubio and Scott Walker. John Kasich might make it interesting, but I doubt it.

Why? Mitt Romney won the nomination despite being the first choice of zero primary voters for two reasns: he had a national organization and his competition were literally clowns. I mean put a red nose on Newt Ginhrich and he's a hit at kid's birthdays.

Like Romney, Bush is nobody's first choice. But Rubio, Walker, and Kasich are real candidates. At this point in 2011 here's what the PPP poll in Iowa reported:

So, sure, if Jeb! were up against "Oops", Miss Crazy Eyes, and Old Man Paul, then, yes, all that money backing him might convince GOP voters to get behind their electable second choice.

To be the first choice of the Reaganist base, a candidate must make certain commitments that Jeb! is not willing to make. But Rubio and Walker have declared their fealty to St Reagan. Taxes? Killing jobs. Regulation? Holding us back. Climate change? Doubt it. Abortion? Murder. Unions? Evil. Immigrants? Upon reflection, you're right: deport them all. Public funding of schools? Optional.

Jeb! has correctly calculated that you can't both hate immigrants and get Latino votes. You can't call abortion murder and carry suburban women.

So neither Rubio nor Walker have any chance of winning a general election. But the media had decided that they pass the laugh test. And that's all it takes, because it is an article of faith among Reaganists that the path to victory is clear for the candidate willing to run as a "true conservative."

If said leaders cannot even convincingly demonstrate that Jeb's more electable than Donald Trump, why would Caucus and primary voters follow them over the cliff to support a guy they clearly don't like?

...Whenever the media analyses itself, you can always feel the competition between an earnest desire to understand the world and outcome based reasoning. The outcome they need to arrive at follows from their view that democracy depends not just on a free press, but on the very peculiar kind of free press that developed in the decades after World War II.

...

One of the many, many things I love about this piece is that Brian Beutler never once uses the left-right spectrum metaphor. In fact, he outright rejects it and replaces it with a DARWINIAN METAPHOR!!!! I am so happy!

This wasn't a big problem when a high school diploma qualified students for a career. But today, when post-secondary education is essential to secure employment, our system of providing it is separate but equal. If you didn't go to college, you still pay state taxes and fund State U, but your kids won't go there. Instead, they are left to fend for themselves in the jungle of trade schools, community colleges, and for-profits.

That's how these people learn to act. They get it from their peers. They don't have morals or a sense of justice, not like most Americans I know. You can call me prejudiced, but I've known too many of them.

A superior metaphor for politics is a tubing trip on a river. We lash our inner-tubes to the tubes of other members of our tribe, people who share our interests and our identity, people with whom we would happily share our beer. Which is why one of the tubes holds a trash-can cooler full of ice and beer, but no one really keeps track of who bought the beer and who bought the ice as everyone drinks according to their thirst. But "the communal beer" is only communally shared with the folks lashed into our raft.